Evolving Common Sense

In 2002, in Cobb County, Georgia the school district appended stickers to it's biology textbooks. These stickers are now being removed. According to this New York Times' story:

ATLANTA, Jan. 13 - A federal judge in Georgia has ruled that schools in Cobb County must remove from science textbooks stickers that say "evolution is a theory, not a fact" that should be "approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."
Clarence Cooper of Federal District Court, wrote that the stickers, perhaps inadvertently, "convey a message of endorsement of religion," violating the First Amendment's separation of church and state and the Georgia Constitution's prohibition against using public money to aid religion.

Finally, some common sense! The judge's opinion gives the legal reasons for removing those stickers, but I'd like to address it from a more general approach.
Those stickers are all kinds of wrong. First of all, all science "should be approached critically, and with an open mind." That's the way science works: You have an idea, you test it, people argue about it, you modify your ideas and test it some more. Everything is done critically, and one should accept nothing on faith. That's why it is called science. From what I understand, it is religion that sometimes has the problem with criticism, not science.

Secondly, this whole business about evolution being a theory and not a fact is completely misleading, if not downright wrong. It is explained eloquently in this FAQ from the Talk Origins web site, but I'll quote a few excerpts. The radical Oxford English Dictionary defines a scientific theory as: "a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed." The idea that organisms have descended from common ancestors is on par with the earth revolving around the sun or the theory of gravity. What is debatable, or less understood, however, "are questions about the mechanism of the observed changes... how did evolution occur?". These questions are what science is most effective at addressing. Scientists can make hypothesis and then perform experiments to evaluate those hypothesis. Ideas can be argued and changed. Yes, ideas that were thought to be true in the past get refuted, but only with proper evidence and thought. Evolution is a theory in the strict, scientific definition of the word. And yes, it is not 100% certaintly true. But at this point, anyone who considers themself a scientist understands it to be true, even if the mechanisms are not completly understood.
Finally, to address the issues of teaching about "An intelligent designer" or creationism in school biology classes. Science classes teach science, not religion. You cannot design an experiment to test whether evolution occurred under the guidance of an intelligent designer. You can show very clear evidence to refute creationist ideas about the age of the earth, but of course cannot challenge the idea of God itself. I'm all for discussing and learning about religion, and religious diversity should be celebrated. The place to do it, however, is not in a science class.